A Rustic Cabin: Finding a Sense of Place

FISHHEAD PRESS IN COOPERATION WITH KEOKEEBOOKS.COM (2024) 215 pages, soft cover, illustrated.

Interested in buying signed copies of a book? If so, contact Dennis.

After searching the slopes of northeastern Oregon’s Blue Mountains for five years, Dauble stumbles upon a circa 1940 log cabin located inside a former dude ranch/hot springs resort in the Umatilla River canyon. Through it all—the fixups, 100-year flood, passing of loved ones—nineteen years of ownership have passed with no regret. Part natural history, part memoir, and part practical advice, A Rustic Cabin is an entertaining account of one man’s dream of owning a cabin near a rushing trout stream. His love of place and family will raise your spirit and fill your heart with delight.

Dauble generously carves off a slice of memories from regular visits to an (almost) riverside cabin. As he knits those memories into stories, you can feel him tugging at the unseen threads that bind us all together. It’s been a while since I dreamed of living in a rustic cabin, but Dauble didn’t just reawaken that wish—he transported me there.

– Lisa Maloney, author of Day Hiking Southcentral Alaska and Moon Alaska

Dauble writes with a wonderful mix of humor, realism, knowledge, and a close attention to both nature and human behavior as he shares these personal tales about his 19-year love affair with his Rustic Cabin in the Umatilla River Canyon.

– Matthew Dickerson, author of The Salvelinus, the Sockeye, and the Egg-Sucking Leech and A Fine-Spotted Trout on Corral Creek.

A cool mountain breeze wisps through the pines, carrying birdsong and the sharp scent of evergreen. The Umatilla River tumbles in the distance, offering rainbow trout on the fly. The fresh aroma and bitter satisfaction of sipping coffee on the porch, the follies of family gatherings, and the blood, sweat, and tears shed to burn timeless memories into chinked log walls and gingham drapes. Every outdoorsman dreams of a cabin in the woods— a dream that Dennis Dauble shares in masterful detail in A Rustic Cabin

– Bradly Trumbo, author of Wingshooting the Palouse.

If you care deeply about your sense of peace, your sense of place in the world, perhaps you, like Dennis Dauble, have dreamt of A Rustic Cabin. In these pages infused with memories of work and wisdom, of fortitude and forgiveness, redolent of the essences of moss and morels, one finds the recipe for simple living.

– Gary Lewis, TV host and author of Fishing Central Oregon, Fishing Mount Hood Country and John Nosler Going Ballistic.